“There’s an awful lot of holes up there,” I mused aloud, pointing upward. Fading starlight glimmered through missing sections in the high, vaulted ceiling. “They could still get in if they wanted.” Some windows were technically intact, but they were by far in the minority, and any that had managed to survive were still spray-painted over with enough graffiti and gang signs to disfigure whatever the stained glass had originally depicted.
“I don’t think they can,” Tamara followed me as I cautiously ventured away from the imposing double doors, but she made her way slowly, obviously nearing exhaustion as her adrenaline burned out. Her eyes were steadily contracting once more to human-like proportions, their too-brilliant liquid gleam fading. “Not from the sound of what happened earlier. Sanguinarians are just as susceptible to the pain of trying to trespass on holy ground as, well, as you’re supposed to be.” She stared at me in the dim, as if she were trying to figure me out anew. Then she grinned, suddenly and triumphantly. “Roof, windows, basement; it won’t matter. They can’t get in. We did it!”
I frowned. “Won’t they just loiter outside until someone brings a battering ram, or a bulldozer or something?” I would.
She shook her head, still grinning like a madwoman. “Nope! Hallowed ground doesn't care how you try to harm it. There are always consequences.” She took a deep breath. “And they’ll have to scatter before dawn, anyway. A Sanguinarian caught by the breaking dawn loses the ability to pass as human. Maybe forever. I don’t know.”
I whistled. Or I tried to. “One hell of a price.” I looked around at the cold, forgotten stone that lay fallen all around us. “Speaking of which, I guess I’ll have to find someplace here to lair. There’s no time to do anything else, especially if they’re going to be watching for a while.” I shuddered. The old church, while a lifesaver, didn’t look too secure from the light of dawn, making the prospect of daytime even less appealing than it had been.
She nodded. “Don’t worry, Ash. I’ll be right here with you.” I opened my mouth to protest, but she held up a hand to halt me. “No argument! You saved my life back there. And more.” Now it was Tamara’s turn to shudder visibly. “It’s the least I can do. I’m probably safer in here for the time being, too.” She puffed out a tired breath and plopped down on the arm of one of the intact pews. “Besides, I’m so tired even the floor is calling my name. The long night and all of the fighting really took it out of me.” A flicker of a hungry gleam passed through her sapphire eyes and was gone. Or did I imagine it?
“Not to mention all the punches you took,” I teased, thumping down numbly next to her.
She snorted, rubbing at her nose. “Thanks for reminding me. Like you’re one to talk; I saw you take everything from those sacrifice rods, to a freaking car, to—” Her eyes shot wide again with alarm. “Holy shit. Did one of them bite you?”
I could feel her tensing beside me, suddenly wary. I thought back, confused, trying to remember accurately through the rage and adrenaline. “Uhhh…maybe?” I rolled a shoulder, trying to feel it out. “You’re worried about their poison, right? I don’t feel anything.”
Her eyebrows went up, but she relaxed a little. But only a little. “I was pretty sure that feral one got you.” She slipped around behind me, and I pulled aside my nasty, battered skull hoodie to let her see the area in question. “You realize it’s not just the toxin part that worries me, right?” She slid her cool hands along the dead flesh of my shoulder: cooling, comforting, calming. Reflexively, I sighed as I relaxed into it. “Their venom addicts you. One bite and that’s it, forever.”
I blinked. “Holy shit.” That’s fucking horrifying.
“No kidding. And the more they bite you, the more addicted you become. With enough venom, they can make even the hardiest supernaturals their slaves. There’s no cure. Once you’re bit, that’s it. Holy shit is right.” I could almost feel her frown. “It feels weird saying that in here.”
I snorted. “I feel fine though. Really,” I insisted. I felt along my own shoulder, above the collarbone, where I remembered the Sanguinarian trying to bite down. There were a lot of scrapes and indentations there that hadn’t been before. How messed up had I gotten, without pain driving me to avoid it? My hand grazed hers and lingered for a moment before I put it back in my lap.
“I think you’re looking for this,” Tamara commented, leaning forward, holding a tissue in the palm of her hand. And in the tissue was a curved, inch and a half long Sanguinarian fang.
I barked out a laugh as I realized what had happened. “It came out when he tried to bite me.”
I could feel her chuckle, a spot of warmth in the cold, forlorn chapel. “Serves him right. I think he broke your skin, but…” She wadded the fang up in the tissue and threw it out one of the shattered windows. “Ash, you’re dead. I don’t think the toxin affects you.” Her voice held a hint of wonder. “No wonder they wanted your kind gone.”
Working it over in my head, I grunted. “Yeah. Makes sense.” My train of thought took a darker turn. “But won’t they just figure out what I am and tell the others? And the whole genocide thing starts all over again?” I might not like the only other two Strigoi I’d met, but that didn’t mean our whole kind deserved to die. Again. Especially me. I couldn’t say I was fond of the idea.
“Actually, I’m not sure how many of them survived.” She shrugged. “Besides, those were young Sang-bangers, just Sanguinarian fodder. Everyone will just think they're freaked out, terrified, and exaggerating.” A little uncertainty crept into her fine, flawless features. “Hopefully.”
Well, it’s better than nothing. “So that’s why they tried to bite me, then? Instead of just going for a kill?”
Tamara nodded, sliding off the pew and slipping past me. “It’s a tactic they use. Capture and convert.” She made a face. “Let’s talk about something else, though. Like how to keep you safe from the sun.” She beckoned, and I followed her down the aisle, my joints creaking, both of us looking for anything I could use to properly shield myself. I knew the dawn was approaching; my anxiety was rising, and I could feel it in my bones like an ache. Tamara glanced back and reached over, giving my hand a brief squeeze. “Don’t worry, Ash. There’s probably a room somewhere at the back we can use.”
I hesitated, falling a step behind. “Actually...I’m sorry. I feel like an ass, but can we not do the Ash thing, please? There’s only one person who really calls me that anymore, and…”
Tamara tilted her head. “Huh? Oh! No, sure. I understand.” I forced a smile as she pondered. “So...how about Ashes?” She smiled prettily.
I thought it over for a second, then nodded. “As long as it’s not prophetic,” I rasped.
“Hopefully not,” She laughed as we continued. “At this point I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You saved me first.” I snorted. “Remember that when I get on your nerves.”
At the back of the church, we found what we were looking for. We hoped. Stone stairs wrapped around to either side of a raised platform, from which sprouted a grand, half-shattered podium originally shaped like wings in flight. Now those wings were broken, their carved feathers scattered and crushed or simply gone. But beneath it, set into the platform, was a set of stairs leading downward..
But they were covered in a metric fuckton of rubble.
“You know…The more I look at it...” Tamara put her hands on her hips and glanced back at me. “I’m not so sure this is a normal church layout. But what do I know?”
“As much as the next Ashes.” I stepped past her and down onto the first step, seizing a huge block and hauling it upward. “But, you know. Gift, horse, mouth, and all that.” There wasn’t going to be a safer place for me to refuge from sunlight than freaking underground, after all.
Together, we put our backs into clearing the passageway. Tamara wasn’t as strong as I was, not by a long shot, and obviously nearing exhaustion. But the Moroi was still impressively powerful. We hadn't gotten very far before
I noted her irises starting to swell once more, brilliant and impossibly blue. I hesitated, but she just waved for me to keep going. The foreboding tension building along my spine told me I didn’t have time to argue.
It took me way too long to realize my claws were long gone. They’d disappeared sometime a while back, either during or right after the mad dash to the church, gone away when I wasn’t paying attention. I hadn’t figured out the trick to what made them come and go yet, but I would.
“Do Moroi have claws?” I asked absently as we heaved and dug. After all, I had them, and I clearly remembered that the Sanguinarians did, too.
Tamara paused, catching her breath. “Claws? No.” She smiled a cool, slightly sad smile. “Hun, they’d just get in the way.” The Moroi mopped sweat from her forehead, one more thing I didn’t need to do any more. “You know,” she pulled out her phone, glanced at it thoughtfully, and put it back away. “I could have called some people for help. Would have made all of this a lot easier.”
“But you didn’t want to call them into a trap.”
She nodded. “That too.”
We went back to clearing the passageway. My clock, after all, was ticking. Fortunately, a few tons of stone were only so much of a barrier to me, especially with assistance. It’s not like the earlier fight had worn me out, or anything. I hesitated to admit it, but the perks of being a dead girl were starting to mount up, while the downsides weren’t so bad, I supposed. Except for one.
I tore my mind away from the memory of Lori’s earlier reaction, made easier by the fact that we finally breached the wall of debris locking us out of the church’s mysterious lower level. All was dark and quiet down there, and the only sounds were Tamara’s heart and breath. The only thing moving was the flurry of dust disturbed by our rock-moving, a million little specks of gray dancing in my monochrome vision.
It was serene. Peaceful.
It was a start.
22
Just a talk in the dark
I wasted no time in stepping into the deep, inviting shadows.
“Hold up,” Tamara called, fishing in her little hip pouch and pulling out one of the most compact LED flashlights I’d ever seen. She turned it on with a flick of her wrist, sending a focused beam tearing away the darkness before us. I’d already forgotten Tamara couldn’t see in the pitch black like I could. “Awesome. Let’s go.”
We didn’t make it far before the path ended, choked into useless obscurity by rubble and a tunnel collapse. From what we could see, it looked like the underground passage might have once run the length of the whole nave, probably even further. But whatever the lower level had once been, all that was left now was a mangled congestion of broken stone and tile, apparently forgotten by God himself. The passage ran straight ahead as far as I could see, branching off to rooms on either side at regular intervals until the way forward dead-ended with caved-in debris. I hadn’t been in many churches, especially not long enough to discover their underground secret passages, but this passageway was only adding to my suspicions that this was not a normal church.
We investigated the side rooms for my sake; right now, I couldn’t think of a better or safer place to spend my daytime hours than in a square stone box twenty feet under the ground. Unfortunately, they were mostly a no-go, clogged with more crap we didn’t have time or energy to move. It looked like someone had gone out of their way to preserve some of the crumbled statuary and extra pews down here in better days, and the rooms were stuffed full of such things, mixed in with other decaying churchy fixtures like furniture and tapestries. Eventually, it seemed, they’d run out of either room, time, or care.
I could have cleared one, of course, given the time, but I didn’t have any to spare. Instead, in mutually agreed silence, Tamara and I hollowed out a bit of rubble just inside one of the rooms, just enough to squeeze out of the main hallway. Then I ventured into the brightening upstairs just long enough to drag—with difficulty—a huge section of fallen pillar onto the mouth of the stairway, wedging it firmly and blocking the path to us with tons of man-made boulder.
“Well, it could be better,” I announced, my voice gravel, “but it’d take a fucking backhoe to get down here now. And I’d like to think we’d hear it coming.” But, even then, would I be able to wake up?
“I still don’t think they’ll come back,” Tamara replied, nodding. “And even if the Sanguinarians wanted to, they still can’t come in. They’d have to send normal people—probably people with machines or blasting equipment. And guns. But normal people I can deal with.” She shrugged, the outer edge of her irises gleaming. “But they won’t do that. That’s not how we operate. They won’t throw humans at something supernatural when there could be that kind of confrontation. It’s an escalation that risks their own secrecy as much as anyone else’s.”
“Mutually assured destruction,” I rasped. “This is why we can’t have nice things.”
She snorted, amused. “Pretty much.”
We started settling in, Tamara because she was tired, myself because somewhere far above, the sun was crawling steadily above the horizon, and my strength fled, forcing me to sit down or fall down. What’s the chances a ray of light makes it through the roof, past the pillar, and slants into this room? And if it does, do I even wake up? Fear coiled, trying to rise, and I stubbornly pushed it back down. I took what was supposed to be a deep breath but only managed to make a loud, entertaining wheezing sound. Was that a punctured lung? The world would never know.
Into the ensuing silence and pre-dawn dread, I looked over at my Moroi companion and voiced the question that had been nagging at me for what felt like hours. “So.” I cleared my throat, a sound like gargling rocks. “Princess, huh? What’s that all about?”
Tamara froze, then let out a long sigh. “You caught that, huh?” I grinned at her. “Let’s just say the Sangs wanted me alive for a reason, and—” She cut off and shook her head. “You know what? No. I’m done with hiding it.” She looked up at me, catching my tired eyes with hers. “I’m a pureblood Moroi, and a member of the most influential Moroi family that still exists today.” She straightened her shoulders, but it wasn’t pride I heard in her voice. “My real name is Tamara Moroaică of what amounts to the Moroi royal family.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Moro… Moro…” I stopped before I hurt myself. “Royal family?”
“Mo-rai-ka,” she enunciated slowly. I wasn’t sure I could roll an ‘r’ that prettily if I tried. A smile quirked the corners of her perfect mouth upwards. “And yes, more or less. That is, my mother’s been in power so long, that we might as well be royalty, assuming we weren’t originally.” I quirked a curious eyebrow, a simple gesture that took way too much energy. “My mother is the Succubus Queen of the Moroi, Lillith.” She elaborated dryly. “I’ll leave her particular talents up to your imagination.”
I squeezed out a wheezy whistle. “Wait, Lillith? You mean the Lillith?”
“No one’s ever had the courage to ask,” Tamara said, seeming stone-cold serious. “Not that lived to talk about it, anyway.” She thumped her head back against the dusty pew we’d picked to rest against. “I’m going to be in so much trouble.”
I frowned, concerned. “Why?”
“For not calling my family about the attack. Or letting them know where I am or what I’ve been up to… You know. For being me.” She let out a breath.
“Well, you were kinda busy.” I said.
“There are no excuses for Liandra.” Tamara shook her head.
“Who?”
“My sister. She’s an asshole.” The Moroi made a face. “She’s also kind of responsible for me right now.”
I pursed my lips thoughtfully. “Well, you still could. They don’t know when things went down. Tell them it’s the first chance you had after shit calmed down.”
Tamara shook her head more emphatically. “No way. Things get complicated when they get involved. First off, Liandra will tell me to let the whole rescue thing drop, because it's ‘no
t our business’. And I’m not willing to do that.” Tamara glowered. “Second, it won’t take them too long to figure out I found what might be the world's last surviving Strigoi once they see you and start digging.” She gave me a severe look. “And you don’t want that. Especially not with Liandra.” She sighed.
“Oh.” I grimaced. That did sound like a bad idea. “Thanks.”
Tamara gave me a tired smile, waving away my thanks. “So if I have to call right now, I’ll have to lie to Liandra. And I don’t want to lie to Liandra. I learned long ago it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
I snorted, amused, and waited for her to elaborate further. She didn’t. “Okay, so why were the Sanguinarians out hunting princesses?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. Then they went cold, like sapphire ice. “Because they can. Even us. All they need is a little plausible deniability, and no one dares press the point.”
“Are they that powerful?”
“They own Clarion Industries, if that helps bring it into perspective any.”
That put the mortal side of their power into perspective for me real quick. No one lived in the Southeast US for six months without knowing Clarion Coal, Oil, and Steel. CCOS wasn’t the powerhouse energy producer they used to be. Far from it. But they made up for it these days by owning a chunk of every major business in the area. Everyone knew, if you wanted to make it big, you needed Clarion’s approval, and once you got in with Clarion, you were in for life. Like it or not.
Everyone I’d heard talk about it had always seemed to assume the powerful, aging business had Mafia ties. But now, all of that made even more sense. Especially all of the politicians they seemed to own.
Dead Girl's Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 1) Page 19